It is really difficult to understand why Renault is struggling as Nissan is achieving a relative success with the Leaf in Europe. The Zoe should be selling well as it is a good car – slightly smaller than the Leaf. In the end the Volkswagen choice to use the same car for both ICE and electric power-trains (Up and Golf) can show be more fruitful. I would like to compare the sales of electric Renaults to VW ones.

The Zoe IMHO is being poorly marketed. I’ve mentioned before the lack of good trim levels, the needlessly slow acceleration (three seconds slower than the Leaf, with almost the same battery spec), the spartan interior (compared even with its platform brother the Clio), a year to ship the granny cable, etc.
Guessing dealers are resisting as well.
It feels like Renault, or a part of it, is sandbagging the car. Right now it is only appealing to committed EV buyers.
My guess is that the situation will improve gradually.

A Renault is what you buy in Europe (outside France) if you can’t afford a real car. And if you can’t afford a real car you still look at other cheap brands before the Renault.
Nissan, even though no Mazda or Toyota, gets bunched together with the other Japanese and always gets good enough reviews.

Also it cost the same as the Leaf while beeing poorer at everything (can I hear you say “easy choice”).

One factor that seems to influence the the sales in my opinion is the 3-phase AC charging system. There are many issues reported with it, and I heard many stories of drivers who said that a charging station will trip the fuse when plugging in, or strange errors like stopping halfway. In germany even some charging stations have stickers which tells you it is forbidden to plug in a Renault Zoe.

For me personally the issue was that the car does not have an acceptable fast charge option. renault is the only one having the 43 kw 3-phase charger. All other cars support either Chademo or CCS. The result is that there is very limited interest to install this, while especially chademo’s are easy to find in many countries in Europe. This means that long distance trip are basically impossible in Europe, unless you are willing to wait 2 hours after driving one hour, because public chargers in Europe are mostly 11 kw. Not acceptable for me.

So I think renault made a very stupid decission to go for another charging sytem than all other car manufacturers. They are alone, and therefor no great interest to install 43 kw AC. If they would switch to Chademo or CCS i would reconsider the car.

I knew that the Fluence ZE didn’t have the fast charge option but I thought that with the Zoe they would adopt the same charging system used in the Leaf – principally because Nissan and Renault are associates. Let’s figure. So I will keep on eye in a second hand Leaf…

I would say the reason for the poor success is the same story as decsribed in the film “Who killed the electric car”. The big boys in car and oil industries control the game. Today they cannot kill EVs complitely but they can keep growth rates and volumes very low as you can see in the case of Renault. But hopefully Elon Musk and his colleagues in TESLA will crack the “Maffia” for the good in mankind.

I agree with Zoe driver.I tested every ev on the market including the Tesla S and the Zoe was the best in it’s class and if I had need for the range and use then a Tesla S would be parked on the drive.Renault are doing the right thing and the battery technology will eventually give greater range which is what we all want to phase out ICE transport completely. Renault just need to promote the Zoe more and show all it’s design and technical advantages over other similar EVs

I don’t think the comparison with Tesla makes much sense. Tesla has been active in the biggest EV market in the world for a couple of years, Renault is not.
Also, Tesla makes a car that for the moment has no competitors, the Renault cars all have very similar competitors.

@ Zoe-1 driver
With over 1000 copies Zoe is the best selling EV in Europe in June.
This makes for the second consecutive month the No. 1 in Europe, while it is still almost absent from Norway there or any other make the bulk of their sales.
One can also say that Renault sells more Zoe (122 in June) in Germany as VW and BMW sell EVs in France (67 and 14)
The Kangoo electric utility is the most sold in the world, and the Twizy quadricycle the most sold in Europe, including heat.
You can also see without drawing any hasty conclusions (which I would be careful not to do) after a good start (as for zoe) sales of Tesla Europe crumbling, we can not say that 356 April and 754 in May (June is not the best) are wonderful especially as sales in the U.S. are also in retraies compared to 2013 figures.